Boston Marathon

On April 15, 2013 something happened that changed the world forever.  On this day, at the Boston Marathon, two powerful bombs were exploded at the end of the finish line. The bombs were exploded after almost three quarters of everyone participating in the marathon had already crossed the finish line.  The first bomb exploded in a trash can at 2:50 pm; just thirteen seconds later another went off. This resulted in three dead people and more than a hundred were injured. One of the three dead was an eight year old child. April 15, 2013 is a day that will never be forgotten.

                Personally I just cannot grasp why anyone would ever do this. I understand that people are angry with the world, but why take it to that extent? I just do not get it. It does not make any sense to me. But I can tell one how it made me feel. When my mom called me and told me what happened I was shocked. I did not know what to think or what to do. The minute I heard that I immediately did not feel safe where I was. I was scared that the bomber’s might come to where I am. At the time no one knew where they were or even who it was. I was scared something was going to happen to not only me, but my friends or family. I would not even know what to do if something happened to them. It did not just scare me it made me so angry. I kept asking myself “Why? Why did he do it?” but once I got past the fact that it happened all my fear turned to anger. I think this awful event made everyone come closer. We all had something in common and that was the love for our country.

                I wish I could say that something like this will never happen again, but I cannot. There are people in the world who are going to do awful things, even kill innocent children, but we just have to be strong and stand up to them. We have to be better and smarter than those awful people.

Medline; A Company That Cares

I interviewed my father, John Borroni, on what exactly happens at Medline Industries. There are Medline’s all around the world. The one Mr. Borroni manages is in the industrial park in Mansfield. It is right around the corner! The building itself is absolutely huge, but it needs to be with all the trucks coming in and out all the time. Medline makes supplies for hospitals from tissues to wheel cheers.  There are people who work as secretaries in offices, and there is a warehouse where some workers stay all day and move the supplies to where they are supposed to go. They put everything where it is supposed to go for the truck drivers to pick them up and bring them to the different hospital who hold their supplies.

            So what does the boss do all day? My dad told me about his work day, “Well there is no normal work day, I do not have a set routine. Sometimes I walk into work with over a thousand emails I just got over night so I have to stay in my house all day on days like those. But some days it is completely the opposite and I am in the warehouse moving things ten hours some days!” His relationship with his workers is very important. They go to him for personal problems sometimes! In the interview he was asked, “How do you get along with your workers?” His response was, “It depends on the person. Of course I get along with my employees. The better the worker the better we get along.” Many hospitals take his supplies. The ones that are in the area are Norwood, Morton, and Sturdy. The last question he was asked was, “How do you think the hospitals would run if they did not get your supplies? And how does this affect society?” He answered saying, “Well I mean there is other supply companies, but hospitals would definitely be short of supplies. This could greatly affect the patients. They might not get the full care they need and deserve.”

            By interviewing my father I learned a great deal about his company and the kind of stress he is put under to always be the best. His company never closes even on holidays because when do hospitals ever close? They do not. Therefore John Borroni is a very dedicated to his company. He has to if he wants it to keep running.

Cloning

Have you ever thought about having another one of you? A clone? Well scientists all around the world have been trying to figure out how to make a duplicate of someone. Cloning is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms reproduce asexually. But the problem with that is humans do not reproduce asexually. In cloning ever single bit of DNA is exactly the same for both. 

            You might not believe it, but there are human clones among us right now. They were not made in a science lab though; they are what we call identical twins! There are a few ways to go about cloning. One of which is artificial embryo twinning. In the real process (not artificial) it makes the two cells separate, and they continue to separate on their own until it ultimately develops into a separate individual. This is how identical twins are created. Artificial embryo twinning uses the same approach, but occurs in a Petri dish instead of a mother. This happens by manually separating a very early embryo into individual cells, and then allowing each cell to divide and develop on its own. The more complicated and complex way to clone is called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SNCT) uses a different approach than artificial embryo twinning, but it produces the same result: an exact clone, or genetic copy, of an individual. This method was used when creating Dolly the sheep, the first clone ever.

            Reproductive cloning is expensive and does not guarantee results. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. More than a hundred nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce just one viable clone. In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Japanese scientists have proved that cloned mice live in poor health and die early. Many clone calves were abnormally large. Many cloned animals have not lived long enough to generate good data about how clones age. Appearing healthy at a young age unfortunately is not a good indicator of long-term survival. Clones have been known to die mysteriously.  

But is cloning really necessary? What would you use it for? So your clone can be doing your homework while you are out with your friends? What is the good in that? Absolutely nothing. It will only make people lazier, and less willing to do things on their own. There has not been enough research and experiments on this for scientists to gain enough knowledge to make cloning a good and safe thing.